Jeff McDonald: The (metal) mouth of Manu

You’ll notice something different about Manu Ginobili when he opens his mouth this season. No, he doesn’t speak Swahili now (fluency in three languages will have to do).

But he does have braces.

After a lifetime of yearning to fix what he judged to be a too-crooked smile, Ginobili, at age 30, finally decided to let an orthodontist do it for him. He got braces over the offseason, and says he’s willing to endure a season full of barbs for sporting the Cindy Brady look.

Bruce Bowen, you’ll recall, gave Malik Rose all kinds of grief when Rose began sporting braces a few years back. So far so good for Ginobili: He says Bowen to this point has been silent with the metal-mouth jokes.